Divided: Kurdistan

PKK one of the most prolific terrorist organizations. The KDP and PUK of Iraq have long histories of violence.

The Kurds are the largest group in the world with their own language but no country.

Kurds were carved up by the British after WWII, much like the Balochis .

Once looking at a satellite map of the region, the area where the Kurds live was nearly the same as the area where the snow was in the mountains.

Kurdish is a language like Iranian, but not close enough for mutual intelligibility. The Kurds are spread out over four countries, mostly Iraq, Iran and Turkey, with some in Syria. The goverments of Turkey, Iraq and Syria speak languages with alien roots, Altaic and Arabic, from the Kurdish Indo-European language. Perhaps it is no coincidence that, for much of the period since the European division of the region, Turkish and Iraqi Kurds were the most rebellious. Iranian Kurds are not, to be fair, on fully friendly terms for all of the last 90 years, but little compares to the British hanging 9,000 Kurds in 1919, or Saddam's Anfal campaign. In Turkey, rebellions by Kurds were repeatedly put down in the 1920s and 30s, and there has been a violent rebellion by the PKK for more than twenty years down to the present day. Compared to that, in Iran, there have been peaceful conditions. A Soviet backed separatist movement lasted for a year in 1946, and for a brief period in 1979, during the chaos created by the revolution, perhaps backed by the US or the Israelis, the Kurds had a short lived independent region. Two years of war in ninety, compared to Iraq or Turkey, is a lot of peace, relatively speaking. One of the demands of the 1979 uprising, after increased autonomy, was to use Kurdish as the language of local government. It can't be said that there have been no tensions, since then. The PEJAK rebellion has existed since 1998, although this is often believed to be externally fomented.

Why were Iranian-Kurdish regions so much more peaceful? Other explanations of course include that Turkish Kurds are by far the most numerous, with perhaps 8 of the total 20 millions of Kurds. Iraqi Kurds had resources to fight for during Saddam's era, and were linked to the Soviets during the British period. What could an independent Iranian Kurdish nation stand on? Not so easily their numbers or oil.

One reason things might be more peaceful is that Kurdish and Farsi, the language of Iran, are neighbors in branches of the tree of language, and difficulties in communication of thanks and grievances are smaller.